Newsweek Discovers the Shah, Forgetting US Intervention
Newsweek's resurfacing of the Shah's 'prediction' for Iran's future amidst protests feels less like prophecy and more like selective amnesia. They paint a picture of a nation longing for its past, a convenient narrative for those who might prefer to ignore the inconvenient fact that Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi wasn't exactly a democratically elected monarch. The article itself mentions the Shah's
prediction without dwelling on *how* he came to power or the public discontent festering under his US-backed, often brutal, rule. What the mainstream media, including Newsweek, consistently glosses over is the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup, Operation Ajax, which overthrew Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and reinstated the Shah. Mosaddegh's crime? Nationalizing Iran's
oil industry—a move that ruffled the feathers of British and American corporate interests. The Shah's regime, propped up by the West, then spent decades enriching an elite few while dissent was crushed by SAVAK, his notorious secret police. Focusing on the Shah's 'predictions' without detailing the violent, foreign intervention that kept him in power is historical revisionism disguised as
insightful commentary. Perhaps if the US hadn't meddled, Iran's future might have taken a radically different, and more democratic, path.